Reading List

I’ve been able to include a healthy amount of reading into my studio regimen lately. It’s the most amount of reading that I’ve been able to manage in quite a while and it feels really good. Pictured above are the books that I have been working on, some of which I’ve finished. “Blink”, by Malcolm Gladwell and “The Varieties of Scientific Experience,” by Carl Sagan are the ones that I have finished. Both were very good and the Sagan was amazing. “Blink" was about rapid cognition, which I have been thinking about a lot lately, especially in regard to deciding what to make, as I work from my instincts primarily. “The Fold,” by Deluze is probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever read and is turning out to be very significant to my work. I have to re-read each chapter one or two times before moving on and I am reading the philosophical essays of Leibniz to go along with it. (The Fold is Deluze’s response to Leibniz, claiming him as being the grounding for a Baroque philosophy.) I'm re-reading/ finishing "Vatican to Vegas." It is a history of special effects and a theory of the new Baroque. I never got to finish it, but am starting from the begining.

I always read many things at a time. Some books are better for reading in different circumstances. For instance, I’ll read the Gladwell books or a fiction at the laundry mat or some place where I might encounter distraction, while “The Fold” I read before working on art as I feel as if I’ve been meditating after having read it for an hour or so. I’ll read a chapter here and a chapter there, switching between the books as I feel the need for the different information that they hold.

I try to look at a lot of stuff too. These are the spaces that I have been looking at lately. Two great bargain books. I'm especially blown away by the Baroque ceilings.

Go Time

I've decided that I am going to try to post something on this blog at least once a week. Probably on sudays or mondays. I'm starting the first push of hard work that is in preparation for a solo show. Hopefully this obligation to myself and to my readers (or imagined readers) will figure into the "discipline mix." I might not always have newest work, or find posting drawing after drawing to be boring, so some of the posts (many of the posts) could wind up being about stupid little details about my process and work habits. Enjoy.

Also...spell chech seems to be not working for the last few posts, so...

Reign of Dirt

If you look at the image above, you can see the rectangular outline of where one of my drawings was laying. Last week was the Reign of Dirt. (and the Rain of Dirt) On those two particularly windy days, every time the wind blew dirt would fall from between the planks of wood that make up our ceiling. I'm not sure what that means for the building. The dirt rain seemed to fall primarily over our drawing tables. I just happened to have all of my drawings spread out and Nicole just happened to have started a melt, which was still wet, of course.

Could be worse though. It put a kink in our artmaking for a day or two, but hasn't happened since. The dirt didn't leave any permanent marks on our work and we were able to just brush it off. Well, Nicole's piece actually became a colab with the ceiling and the wind.

This morning, however, I woke to find that the entire loft was exteremely humid due to the sudden temperature rise outside. All of my books, notebooks, paper, and drawings are warped and wavy. One of my magazines looked as if I had dropped it in a puddle.

Sneak Peak

Here's the current version of one of the installations that I'm working on. This image was taken a few weeks ago, so the piece looks a bit different now. Originally, I was going to light a large arched area above the brown part. I was playing with the foil as a tool for shaping the light and came upon this. I like this look. Something about this works. I'm going to try to make it hard to tell what is painted and what is light.